"Conditional cash transfer (CCT) programs aim to alleviate poverty through monetary and in-kind benefits, as well as reduce future levels of poverty by encouraging investments in education, health, and nutrition. The success of CCT programs at reducing poverty depends on whether, and the extent to which, cash transfers affect adult work incentives. The authors examine whether the PROGRESA program of Mexico affects adult participation in the labor market and overall adult leisure time, and they link these effects to the impact of the program on poverty. Using the experimental design of PROGRESA's evaluation sample, the authors find that the program does not have any significant effect on adult labor force participation and leisure time. Their findings on adult work incentives are reinforced further by the result that PROGRESA leads to a substantial reduction in poverty. The poverty reduction effects are stronger for the poverty gap and severity of poverty measures."--World Bank web site.

Conditional cash transfer (CCT) programs aim to alleviate poverty through monetary and in-kind benefits, as well as reduce future levels of poverty by encouraging investments in education, health, and nutrition. The success of CCT programs at reducing poverty depends on whether, and the extent to which, cash transfers affect adult work incentives. The authors examine whether the PROGRESA program of Mexico affects adult participation in the labor market and overall adult leisure time, and they link these effects to the impact of the program on poverty. Using the experimental design of PROGRESA's evaluation sample, the authors find that the program does not have any significant effect on adult labor force participation and leisure time. Their findings on adult work incentives are reinforced further by the result that PROGRESA leads to a substantial reduction in poverty. The poverty reduction effects are stronger for the poverty gap and severity of poverty measures.

Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) programs aim to reduce poverty by making welfare programs conditional upon the receivers' actions. That is, the government only transfers the money to persons who meet certain criteria. These criteria may include enrolling children into public schools, getting regular check-ups at the doctor's office, receiving vaccinations, or the like. They have been hailed as a way of reducing inequality and helping households break out of a vicious cycle whereby poverty is transmitted from one generation to another. Do these and other claims make sense? Are they supported by the available empirical evidence? This volume seeks to answer these and other related questions. Specifically, it lays out a conceptual framework for thinking about the economic rationale for CCTs; it reviews the very rich evidence that has accumulated on CCTs; it discusses how the conceptual framework and the evidence on impacts should inform the design of CCT programs in practice; and it discusses how CCTs fit in the context of broader social policies. The authors show that there is considerable evidence that CCTs have improved the lives of poor people and argue that conditional cash transfers have been an effective way of redistributing income to the poor. They also recognize that even the best-designed and managed CCT cannot fulfill all of the needs of a comprehensive social protection system. They therefore need to be complemented with other interventions, such as workfare or employment programs, and social pensions.

Family Rewards was an innovative approach to poverty reduction in the United States that was modeled on the conditional cash transfer (CCT) programs common in lower- and middle-income countries. The program offered cash assistance to low-income families, provided that they met certain conditions related to family health care, children's education, and parents' work. The first version of Family Rewards, called Opportunity NYC--Family Rewards ("Family Rewards 1.0"), was evaluated in New York City beginning in 2007 using a randomized controlled trial, in which families were randomly assigned to a program group that was offered the program or a control group that was not. Family Rewards 2.0, the subject of this report, was launched in July 2011 in the Bronx, New York, and Memphis, Tennessee. While still offering rewards in the areas of children's education, family health, and parents' work, Family Rewards 2.0 refined the original model in several ways: it offered fewer rewards in each domain, paid those rewards more frequently, offered the education rewards only to high school students, and offered proactive and personalized guidance to help families earn rewards. The addition of guidance from staff members, who actively helped families develop strategies to earn rewards, represented the biggest change from the original model. This report examines whether those changes led to bigger impacts and whether the program had similar effects in a context different from New York City. The findings show that the new program achieved many of the same effects as the original model, but fell short in other, important ways. Family Rewards 2.0 met its short-term goals of increasing income and reducing poverty, although the effects were smaller, given that less money was transferred overall. The program also increased dental visits and adults' self-reported health status, particularly for those in poorer health at study entry. Similar to the earlier program, the new model led to reductions in work and earnings for some participants. However, the new program did not affect students' school progress through Year 4, neither for the full sample of students nor for a more academically prepared subgroup. Overall, the findings indicate that Family Rewards 2.0 did not lead to bigger or more widespread effects. In addition, the failure to replicate the positive effects on school progress for more academically prepared students suggests that the model's effects on education were not very robust. The following are appended: (1) Rewards Offered in Family Rewards 1.0 and 2.0; (2) Parents' Understanding of and Experience with Family Rewards; (3) Impacts on Public Benefit Receipt; and (4) Impacts on Education Outcomes, by Math Proficiency. [Additional support for the evaluation was provided by the Benificus Foundation, the City of Memphis, and the Women's Foundation of Greater Memphis.].

Cash transfers have become a key social protection tool in developing countries and have expanded dramatically in the last two decades. However, the impacts of cash transfers programmes, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa, have not been substantially documented. This book presents a detailed overview of the impact evaluations of these programmes, carried out by the Transfer Project and FAO’s From Protection to Production project. The 14 chapters include a review of eight country case studies: Kenya, Ghana, Ethiopia, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Lesotho, Malawi, South Africa, as well as a description of the innovative research methodologies, political economy issues and good practices to design cash transfer programmes. The key objective of the book is to enhance the understanding of these development programmes, how they lead to a broad range of social and productive impacts and also of the role of programme evaluation in the process of developing policies and implementing programmes.